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by Teresa Martin

If you are reading this, you presumably were not squashed by a maddened crowd at a WalMart and flattened into an EMT's nightmare by a bargain-drunk mob intent breaking down the door to shop shop shop.

I'm not being flip. That's what happened to an unfortunate and now-deceased temporary Wal-Mart employee who was run down and trampled to death by a surge of Black Friday shoppers as the Long Island store opened last Friday.

Black Friday is the day after Turkey-Day when people lose their senses and stand in all-night lines for the chance to spend money. It's also a day that analysts examine for hints of the retail-critical holiday season spending.

According to the National Retail Federation (NRF), 172 million shoppers visited a sales Mecca over the weekend, dropping $41.0 Billion into the consumer economy. This was an increase of about 7% in spending over last year.

NRF is all about consumer shopping and spending. It is the world's largest retail trade association, representing 1.6 million U.S. retail companies, more than 25 million employees - which it helpfully notes is about one in five American workers - and 2007 sales of $4.5 trillion. Yes, that is trillion with a T.

There's a reason the online world so quickly became the big shopping cart in the sky: that's where the money is.

And to capture those valuable online retail opportunities and extend the buying frenzy further into the holiday season, NRF coined a term a few years back: CyberMonday. CyberMonday's cheerleader is Shop.org, NRF's digital division.

That's also why your inbox was probably a lot like mine this week:
FREE SHIPPING!
10% OFF!
BOGO!
SECRET BUYS!
30% OFF ALL GIFTS!
DECEMBER FINDS!
VERY HUSH HUSH
EARLY BIRDS ONLY!!!!

And my personal favorite:
EXCLUSIVE COUPON CODE FROSTY.

And yes, they were almost always in ALL CAPS, or at least one or two KEY phrases were.

Apparently we're as hungry to release dollars into cyberspace as we are into bricks and mortar. NRF said it was expecting 84.6 million consumers to be shopping online on Monday. The Nielsen Company's digital division, which also tracks these things, says it did indeed see a swell of activity, one that registered a 10% increase in traffic over last year's CyberMonday.

The e-rush didn't take any human lives, but it apparently wounded more than a few servers. Information Week reports that overall server slowdowns were typical, response times were sluggy, and that even online retail giants like Dell, Victoria's Secret, and Williams-Sonoma were overwhelmed by the crush of humanity banging down their cyber-doors.

Online bloggers reported that there were apparently real deals, at least on this demographic's beloved electronic gizmos. If you're not shopping in America this week, it appears that you are talking about the shopping experience.

It's all sort of surreal sometimes. I mean, we all need to buy stuff but isn't there some rational boundary here?

In the aftermath of CyberMonday, with the pixels from all those inbox CAPS still flickering faintly in the ether, I am happy to report that I did get the perfect post-Thanksgiving Day balance to all this frenzy of e-tail.

It's 8 am and traffic hits a screeching halt on Rt 6, right at the Eastham Fire Department. Going one way: a family of six, strutting across the street looking every bit like their prehistoric dinosaur ancestors, necks stretched up, glassy brown feathers slicked back to a glassy sheen, scaled toes kicking out in leggy high steps...

Two parents and three youngster wild turkeys were doing their thing. And just past them, heading the opposite direction across the road, were another dozen or so turkey-dinos, striding along, looking drivers in the eye and owning the street with nary a thought about Exclusive Coupon Code Frosty or how to SAVE BIG NOW.

Let's give three cheers for Terra-firma Tuesday!